


Hands Intertwined

by CharredAshes



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Contest Entry, Domestic, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, Marriage, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Trans Male Character, Trans Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, dailyr76, gabe was an edgy punk theatre nerd as a teen, its not exactly explicit in the story but hes trans bc i said so, no revisions we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 12:56:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharredAshes/pseuds/CharredAshes
Summary: Fates slip together like hands clasping tight. It's alright if good intentions pave the path to hell, because they'll be there to guide each other back.





	Hands Intertwined

**Author's Note:**

> written for the ficlet contest at dailyr76.tumblr.com! responding to the prompt "Job well done" 
> 
> wish me luck everyone!

_It started with a hand outstretched._

The SEP’s obstacle course was notoriously grueling – barely even meant to be completed by the new recruits, and certainly not within a reasonable timeframe. You wouldn’t run it like you were supposed to until weeks later, when you’d gone through a couple full cycles of the enhancement drugs. By the end, the scientists told them, they’d be able to run it without breaking a sweat. They definitely weren’t there yet.

But Jack was proud enough to run it at all, even if achy muscles made him clumsily loose his footing on the last wall. He tumbled ass over end across the finish line and was received with equal amounts of cheers and snickers.

And the offer of a helping hand. He looked up to see one of the others – Reyes, he was pretty sure – standing above him with the blazing summer sun lighting a shiny halo around his silhouette. The gentle grin on his face said ‘amused’, but there was a warm kind of softness in those big brown eyes. Something prideful and congratulatory. Jack clasped his hand and let the other SEP recruit tug him to his feet, where he was met with a hand clapped on his shoulder and a casual sort of praise – “Hey, job well done, dude.”

_They carried on with hands on each other’s backs._

Pinned down, with bullets falling like hail, huddled together behind the sturdiest thing they could fine. The wall – more a slab of cement than anything else – had been part of a building once. Bombed out and ruined now, but at least the remains provided something of a cover from the metallic storm.

“Evac should be here in twenty,” Gabriel said, head tipping back against the concrete. His guns were crossed in his lap, at rest, but his hands gripped them hard, muscles twitching and ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice should their shelter be discovered.

“Can’t go any faster?” Jack asked. The joking tone died on his tongue, and his words escaped with a nervous chuckle.

“Relax.” Gabriel laid one of his guns in his lap and reached over, hand resting firm and steady against Jack’s spine. “It’s gonna be fine.” His eyes met Jack’s, and though his face was reassuring, Jack knew. He hadn’t gone through months of training and warfare with Gabriel and learned nothing about him. He was smiling, but those eyes betrayed it all, subtly enough that it would have been impossible to tell if you hadn’t spent so much time with him – he was just as nervous as Jack was.

Jack reached out, turning his body towards Gabriel and laying a hand on his chest. “You’re right,” he agreed. “It’ll be fine.”

A moment passed between them, Gabriel’s hand on his spine and Jack’s hand over his heart. The world was on fire, but for that second, it all faded to a buzz and yeah. Everything was going to be fine.

“We need to push forward to a safer location or we’ll get torn to shreds when we try to evac.” Gabriel finally pulled away as he spoke, and the moment was shattered. He gave Jack another smile, and this time, his eyes were as confident as his words. “Let’s move.”

They moved as quick as they could while crouching, hunched towards the Earth to try and make themselves tiny and unnoticeable, huddled shoulder to shoulder with careful, quiet footfalls. If they were spotted, they were dead. Even the toughest armor only did so much when hellfire was raining on you from every direction. It was more a question of luck, he supposed. An omnic’s sensors could pick up on a shaky breath, never mind boots falling against rubble. They had hope and a prayer and that was about it.

But it was fine. Everything was fine. They practically fell through the door of the nearest uncollapsed building, seeking refuge under the walls sturdy enough to hold up to the explosions and gunfire so far. Jack finally released the breath he’d been holding, hands on his knees as he let his muscles relax. He looked up at the feeling of a hand on his back.

“Job well done keeping your cool,” Gabriel told him, relieved smile curling on his lips. Jack felt something inside him squirm in interest at the praise, but he knocked that feeling away in favor of standing straight and nodding.

“Yeah. You too, Reyes.”

_Steadiness came with hands clasped._

Stained glass stared mournfully down at the Commander, bathing him in multicolored hues of the dying evening light. It was sad, and it was beautiful, and though Jack had certainly had something to tell him, he found himself just pausing to watch Gabriel as he pored over the tactical maps spread out over the repurposed church’s altar.

War still waged outside, but for the moment, this place remained one of serenity. Gabriel did not look to be at peace, but there was a certain meditative quality to Gabriel when he worked, eyes as focused as a hawk’s, brow furrowed in concentration. He didn’t even seem to notice when Jack came to stand beside him, and something about that had Jack smiling fondly.

“Commander?” In one ear and out the other. Anything that could be considered a normal sound in this environment might as well have been white noise to Gabriel when he was this fixated on the task at hand. “Gabriel?” Jack’s hand laid over his on the altar, and finally Gabriel’s eyes dragged upwards from the maps and to Jack’s face.

“Sorry, what was that?” He looked haggard, dark circles under his eyes, a large bandage taped down across part of his handsome face. He’d have battle scars from that. It’d add character, Jack decided.

“Amari wanted to know if you had tomorrow’s plans drawn up yet.”

“Yeah, yeah. Under that folder,” he said, waving his hand dismissively to the left. Jack fetched the papers in question, but he paused. He thought to ask, ‘are you okay?’ but the question stuck in his throat. Of course he wasn’t okay. None of them were okay. None of _this_ was okay. He slid his hand back on top of Gabriel’s.

“You’re doing a good job, y’know.” The corner of Gabriel’s lips tipped up, and that little smile was more than enough.

“Thanks, Jack.” And then Gabriel’s hand turned beneath his to twine their fingers together, squeezing warmly, and the scene’s sadness seemed to drain. It was just beautiful. Just soft. A moment of peace wrapped around them both, and for the rest of the Crisis, Jack would hold onto it as tightly as he could.

_Hands grasped at hips and hair and each other the first time they made love._

It wasn’t planned or even all that intentional, it just … Was. They were the only two people at that particular outpost that night, having scouted ahead of all the others. It was a sleepless night, it was loneliness, and it was want, and when they sat together in the scraped together barracks, it was just _right_.

They were shoulder-to-shoulder, breath intermingling as Gabriel rested his exhausted head against Jack. Dust particles danced in the moonlight streaming through the cracks in the boarded-up window, and Jack tried to focus on that, but he kept finding his eyes drawn back to Gabriel’s gently parted lips.

His best friend. He’d wanted to … He’d wanted to ever since the night in SEP when he’d sat up with Gabriel all night after a particularly aggressive round of injections left him hugging the toilet ‘til dawn. Jack realized, as Gabriel slumped against his chest and let him push the hair away from his sweaty forehead, that he didn’t think he’d ever cared for a friend quite like he cared for Gabriel Reyes.

So, he kissed him, and without even the slightest hesitation, Gabriel leaned up into it. Met him halfway, kissed him in the same way Gabriel did everything: intensely, with purpose and passion.

They made love with the quiet neediness and desperation of two people who knew they might be dead tomorrow but had decided to enjoy the time they had together. There were emotions and desires and aching, burning love that they needed to get out.

Hands grasped at armor and clothes. Lips brushed over the fresh, pink scars on Gabriel’s cheek. Jack tipped his head into it when Gabriel gripped softly at his hair, urging him up to kiss again. Fingers first, pressing gently in, working and curling and stroking until Gabriel was muffling moans and sighs and barely restrained cries of Jack’s name against the curve of the other soldier’s neck.

They held each other, arms around Gabriel’s waist and Jack’s neck and legs tight around his hips, tugging him forward. Heaven. They really probably shouldn’t have, of course, because they were supposed to be on watch, but with Gabriel murmuring heated, shivering praise against his ear and Jack moaning sweetly right back, neither would question or regret the comfort they found in each other. The outpost was safe enough. They’d scouted it themselves, after all. It was no mistake, Gabriel thought, to need. To, just for a little while, be young and in love and unsure of anything except each other.

Gabriel laughed a breathless _nice job_ into the blushing afterglow, the both of them drunk on the relief of long-held tension resolved.

They cleaned up and dressed hastily when they were done, but the moment hadn’t passed. They sat at their watch with Gabriel’s legs draped over Jack’s lap and hands clasped and heads tilted together, and they stayed like that until dawn came to break that perfect reverie. And then they were soldiers again, but soldiers who never hesitated to clutch at each other’s hands when they needed to. An unspoken – a _didn’t-need-to-be-spoken_ – change that never faded.

_There was no strength like the strength found in holding your lover’s hand._

Gabriel couldn’t have been prouder. Strike-Commander Morrison. That was his best friend, and this was the job he deserved. Jack and Gabriel had different styles of leadership, and as much as he might tease him for being ‘by the books’ or trying too hard to play nice with the people in charge, those were exactly the sort of things that made Jack suited to heading Overwatch. It was a position with a lot of rules and red tape. Gabriel had never been interested in rolling over for the U.N. like the position demanded you do. You kind of _had_ to be ‘by the books’.

Gabriel wouldn’t even tease him about those things anymore, he told him.

“I don’t have to,” he said with a shit-eating grin that Jack had long since stopped trying to pretend wasn’t endearing. “Not with them putting your mug on a statue, sunshine. That’s way funnier.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask them to do that, y’know.”

“Dude, I know.” They were beat. Strike-Commander was a position that also came with a lot of _paperwork_. And Gabriel had been busy at work with his own little team, trying to piece together _his_ part in Overwatch. Jack’s dorm had a couch that was excellent for relaxation snuggles though, on the rare night they could get time to just be alone together. “But that’s what makes it funny. If you really let all this stuff go to your head, you’d just be a dick. I’m mostly laughing with you at everyone else.”

“Oh, really?” Jack looked skeptical and amused. He wrapped his arms tight around Gabriel’s waist and spooned up against his back.

“Absolutely.”

“Then let’s laugh, angel.”   _Tickling._ The greatest evil known to man. Jack’s fingers pressed into Gabriel’s sides, picking out the sensitive spots beneath his ribs with practiced ease, and at once Gabriel was screaming with laughter and slapping his hands in protest against Jack’s chest.

“Jack! Fucking – Jesus Christ!” His words were broken up with helpless peals of laughter as he tried and failed to squirm away from Jack’s hands.

“What? Aren’t we laughing together?”

“You’re a fucking – pfft – you’re a _fucking_ –” His face was turning red.

“I’m a what?” Jack’s grin was huge.

“Fucking prick!” Gabriel laughed, hand on Jack’s face shoving him away, and finally he relented, stilling his hands and flopping down against a still giggling Gabriel’s chest. “Jesus, how old are you?”

“I just like hearing you laugh.” His tone was so genuine that  

“I hope it was worth it,” Gabriel said with a smirk. “I was going to say something really nice and you ruined it, sunshine. You killed my genuine mood.”

“Would a kiss bring it back?”

“Possibly. You never know until you try.” It was sweet and soft, Jack’s hand against Gabriel’s jaw, thumb stroking over his skin. When he pulled away, he raised his eyebrows expectantly and Gabriel laughed. “Acceptable. I was just going to say, I’m _really_ proud of you.” His tone had dropped, down from taunting and playful to authentic and positively glowing with warmth. Jack’s eyes twinkled with love. Gabriel continued. “I know this job’s been hard on you, but you’ve been doing so well. You deserve someone telling you so.” Gabriel pulled Jack up, kissing him again, deeper this time. Then he pulled back, he clasped one of Jack’s hands in both of his and squeezed it in support. “So, I’m telling you. Good job, sunshine.”

And it felt better, meant more than any medal or award. Or statue. Jack was sure of it.

_A simple question: May I have your hand?_

Jack could admit it. He kind of hated Gabriel’s job. Gabriel loved it. Loved the freedom, the ability to do what he needed to do without worrying about how he’d justify his rule bending and breaking to their bosses. Jack loved that part too, the part that let Gabriel help people and do what he was best at, but he hated the other parts. The parts that took Gabriel away from him for months on end for missions to God knows where, location details stuffed away in classified folders. The parts that left Gabriel going days without sleep, too wrapped up in planning and tactics and _things that could wait, because you can’t function on coffee and stubbornness, Gabe_. The parts that left Gabriel laid up in the med bay, with shrapnel in his belly. Jack hated those parts the most.

“Hey, I’ve had worse.” Gabriel shrugged it off, even while he was incapacitated, but that, obviously, did little to soothe Jack’s worry.

“You know damn well that’s not the point. What even happened?”

“It’s kind of a long story …”

“Skip to the part where you get a bunch of metal shards embedded in your stomach.”

Gabriel sighed. “Look, honestly, _you don’t want to know_. You know hearing the gory details isn’t going to make you feel any better. Soldiers get hurt now and again, Jack, I don’t see the big deal.”

It was frustrating. Did Gabriel have no regard for his own safety, or was he just brushing it off because he didn’t want to talk about it? Even if he wouldn’t be careful for his own sake, did it ever occur to him how many people he had waiting for him to come home?

“Yeah, no big deal. Mission complete. _Job well done_. Why does not coming home in one piece not seem like a big deal to you? Forgive me for not wanting to have to go knocking on your mother’s door to tell her that her only son was a reckless idiot who went and got himself killed.”

Gabriel glowered at that. “Fine. Maybe I was reckless. Maybe I wasn’t. You’re really that curious, you can read my debrief report. But I know you, and I know if it was one of _your_ recruits about to get their ass blown off, you’d have gotten hurt for them, too.”

 _Ah_. That would explain the puffy-eyed Blackwatch recruit leaving the room when Jack arrived. New kid. Jack didn’t really know anything about them, other than Gabriel’s vague mentions about the newbie being ‘really great with explosives’. Not great enough, evidently.

Jack’s frustration deflated at once, and he sighed as he dropped down into the nearest chair. “I know … You’re right, I would have. I just …Wish you’d take these things more seriously. What about your future?”

“My future.” Gabriel’s lips curled into a tired smile. “Interesting point, Jack. I guess I could stand to be a little more worried about what Blackwatch would do without me.”

“ _Not_ Blackwatch,” Jack corrected. “I’m talking about – you know.” He gestured vaguely between the two of them. “Us.”

There was a moment, where Gabriel seemed to process that. Quietly. Thoughtfully. His head tilted to the side, looking away as he rested against the pillows. “I think about our future plenty.”

“I still have a lot I want us to do,” Jack told him, scooting his chair towards the bed to lay his hand on Gabriel’s arm. Gabriel pulled his arm away, but only to take Jack’s hand and bring it up, pressing his lips to the back of it.

“Me too.” It could have been unspoken, but Jack thought, this seemed more like the kind of thing he wanted to say aloud.

“Gabe?” Gabriel looked back over to him. “Marry me?” He pressed another kiss to the back of Jack’s hand, smiling as he did.

“Yeah. Of course.”  

_Hands on cheeks and a whispered promise of **forever, forever, forever**._

Their wedding was in fall, when the trees in Indiana put on their yearly colorful show – the kind of thing you never got down in LA. LA was for winters, Christmas, a slice of their small yearly allotment of time off spent with Gabriel’s mother and sisters and his little nieces and nephews. LA was kissing under the mistletoe and presents wrapped in glittery paper. Indiana was summer time, a week on the Morrison farm with Jack’s parents, stargazing outside while fireflies lazily blinked around the garden. Their anniversaries were spent on base, clustered together near Gabriel’s birthday and Halloween, spent carving pumpkins and decorating when they had the time.

Their traditions were deeply ingrained and always honored. Maybe they’d push the Indiana visit forward or backward a week, maybe they’d nudge their trip to LA closer to New Year’s – adjustments were acceptable, but these were the times they always carved out for themselves. And for others.

“I’ll be honest, I’m still not sure why you brought him.” Jack’s voice drifted through the small bedroom. Gabriel’s childhood bedroom. It was all band memorabilia and posters for musicals, a forgotten guitar and photos of friends from when Gabriel still dyed his hair, an old sewing machine laid on top of a box of fabric and drawings pinned on the walls. There was an anarchy symbol spray painted on the outside of the door, faded out like someone had tried to scrub it off but ultimately given up and never bothered to paint over. Memories that spoke of the young man Gabriel used to be. Teenage rebellion but always home before dinner, because _even a fifteen-year-old knows it’s not punk rock to worry your mother, Jack_.

“Who? The kid?” Gabriel blinked at him from where he was wrapping presents on the floor. “Oh, yeah, the new recruit accidentally sets three things on fire in his first month, but let’s just leave him on the base _alone_ for a week. The only people he listens to are me and Ana, and you know she’s not there either, so it was either bring him with us or spend the whole time wondering if we’d be coming back to an accidental arson case. I need to take his lighter away. He doesn’t need to be smoking anyway.”

Jack listened with a little smirk curling on his lips. Gabriel had excuses, but they didn’t quite add up. “I doubt he could get into that much trouble without supervision for a week. He’s seventeen, not ten.”

The answering silence was _loud_. Gabriel had even paused his present wrapping. After a moment, his eyes dropped back down to his work, and he said, “Well, you said it yourself. Jesse’s seventeen. Who leaves a seventeen-year-old alone on Christmas?”

Soft. Gabriel could pretend all day to be tough, but he was _soft_. They’d never talked about kids, but it looked like he’d gone and adopted himself one, anyway. Jack chuckled.

“Besides, everyone loves him.” True enough. The ornery, closed-off teenager fit right in with the Reyes. Gabriel’s mother was impossible to dislike and knew a thing or two about teenagers with attitude problems, and for all of Jesse’s bad behavior, Gabriel had never seen him be more patient than he was with Gabriel’s sisters’ small children. He was a good kid, really. He just needed people to care about him. This was that.

“Your mom does keep dropping hints about us having kids,” Jack added with a soft laugh.

“You say that like you’re joking, but she made him join in on the family picture. She’s assigned him ‘grandchild’ status and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Jack sat on the floor beside him and watched him wrap presents for a moment, then moved to help. He’d never been good at wrapping presents. Arts and crafts – Gabriel’s thing, not his. He was determined to help though, so he picked out something simple and box-shaped, since that seemed easiest, and he got to work.

It was so domestic. The two of them sitting in Christmas sweaters, wrapping presents.

“Hey, Jack?”

“Uh-huh?” Jack’s face was scrunched in concentration, tip of his tongue poking out from between his teeth. Gabriel’s hands on his jaw guided his face up. They playfully squished his cheeks as Gabriel kissed him and murmured against his mouth.

“I love you. Forever. Forever and ever and ever.” _Forever_. The promise they’d made to each other in their wedding vows. The promise they murmured to each other before each mission away and in tender moments alone.

Jack smiled into the kiss, and when they both finally pulled back, Gabriel cast an approving look down at the nearly-wrapped package between them. He grinned at Jack. “Hey, looks nice. Job well done, soldier.”

_Hands clenched tight, fists at their sides._

They broke like ice breaks a rock. There was a crack. And then it was another thing, and another thing, and _one more fucking thing_ , and then it was raised voices and hurt feelings. It was Gabriel taking things too far and jeopardizing the entire organization and it was Jack being too wrapped up in politics and appearances and it was _our hands are tied, Gabe_ and it was _yeah, well, I’m not going to let mine be_.

They broke and they broke and they broke, but they were people, not rocks, and they always came back to each other with soft hands and gentle words.

_You know I support you all the way._

_I know._

Jack was stretched thin. The more out of line Gabriel stepped, the less he felt like he was capable of protecting him. The more it felt like he was slipping through Jack’s fingers. There was nothing he could do to stop Gabriel’s name being dragged through the mud. Maybe he didn’t agree with every choice Gabriel had ever made, but he understood the reasoning behind those choices, and he knew, knew for a fact, no one cared as passionately or as much as Gabriel did.

Precautions seemed to have lost their meaning to Gabriel. He’d been a brilliant tactician for as long as Jack had known him, but he seemed to be stuck in short term thinking. Someone hurt his family, so someone had to pay. Blackwatch was out in the open, so he might as well roll with it and keep shirking the rules. The further he pushed, and the more Jack wanted to beg him to take a step back and help him _fix this_ instead of just acting like they could work around shattered glass.

But then it didn’t matter. It stopped mattering when an explosion sent HQ up in flames, and everything that they’d built together, quite literally, turned to ash.

It wasn’t as though nothing mattered, though. No, it was just that priorities changed. Because they’d said forever. And they meant forever. So maybe Gabriel was right – Jack played by the rules his whole life, and what did that get him?

A fractured family and the whole world ready to believe Gabriel was the one at fault. And he wasn’t going to let that be their forever.

_Bloodied knuckles get your blood pumping._

Jack wasn’t scared. Maybe someone would have said he should have been, with metal claws curled in his jacket and smoke curling around his boots, but he’d earned the bloody nose and split knuckles in a fight that the Reaper had interrupted, not one he’d been a part of.

“Poor soldier. Sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and getting it broken.” Jack stared down the mask of death before him, not flinching when one of Reaper’s hands raised. He blinked in surprise when that hand came forward and wiped the blood away from his mouth with the cuff of his coat, strangely tender. “You know you shouldn’t be here.”

Reaper seemed like the kind of man you could only meet on a dark and stormy night, so the contrast of yellow afternoon sunshine leaking in through the abandon building’s dirty windows made him seem … Less intimidating. Less the ghostly presence he wanted to pretend to be.

“Neither should you, Reyes.” The mask betrayed nothing. No nervous flash in his eyes for Jack to pick up on. But it did tilt. Softly, to the side, features unmoved but posture perhaps, a touch, somewhat open. _I’m listening_ , it said. _Then I’ll keep talking_ , Jack decided.

“You don’t belong here. You know you don’t.” He lifted his hands slowly, trying not to startle the other. His fingers found the connections on his own mask and he clicked them out of place. It clattered to the floor with a noise that echoed loudly in the creaky old house. The claws gripping his jacket loosened.

Reaper didn’t stop Jack from reaching up, pulling the white mask free. Gabriel looked back at him with tired eyes. Smoke leaked from the corners of his mouth, from his scars, from cuts on his skin. He looked close to falling apart – not like he was rotting. More like he was made of pieces and was trying with everything he had to hold those pieces together, and only mostly succeeding. He looked like a man wearing and stretching at the seams, if not quite coming apart just yet.

“You don’t belong here,” Jack repeated, yanking off his gloves to feel Gabriel beneath his fingers. “Not by yourself.” His touch was greedy, desperate. It had been too long, too long, too long, and Jack wanted nothing more than to pull him into a kiss, but he knew this required delicacy. So, he touched his cheek, and Gabriel didn’t lean into it, but he also didn’t pull away. “Gabe …” The sound of his own name, from Jack’s lips, seemed to stir him. It made his whole body perk, in the subtlest of ways, yes, but still perk, with interest, just for a moment before relaxing. “You’ve never had to be alone. We’re a team, remember?” He brushed his left hand over Gabriel’s jaw, letting the cool gold of his ring run over his skin. Gabriel’s breath felt cool when it ghosted over Jack’s skin. “You and me. Forever. Just let me help you.”

It was ambiguous, and he meant it to be. He wanted answers and payback as much as Gabriel surely did, but if Gabriel wanted to be done with the double agent thing, Jack would be more than happy to help him with that.

And then Gabriel was smoke in his fingers, gone like he’d never even been there. Jack felt weight settle coldly in the pit of his stomach. His mask was the only thing left. He picked it up and clutched it to his chest, trying to soothe the ache in his heart, the painful twist in his stomach.

Good job, Jack. He brought the mask up and tipped his forehead against its. Good job.

_Hand over heart, I’ll love you ‘til the day I die. And then some._

Motels were never famous for having particularly comfortable beds, but Jack had gotten used to sleeping in them. Blinds drawn, blocking out the sun. Sleeping during the day so he could get a move on at night. Motels were also not known for having particularly tight insulation. The black smoke billowing in under the door would have earned a reaction from Jack, had he not been dead to the world asleep.

The dip of someone sitting on the bed was more than enough to wake him though. His hand flew to the nightstand, landed on his pistol and froze there as he stared up. Gabriel. Above him. In his bed. Hands on either side of his hips. Staring down at him unreadably.

“… You’re here.”

“I’m here.” Even Gabriel sounded surprised by that fact. He quickly added, “I tried not to …” Tried not to be there, Jack understood. He didn’t know what was keeping Gabriel away from him, but he wanted nothing more than what he had in that moment. He wanted to pull him down into bed and lay there with him forever, but Gabriel beat him to the punch.

He laid down, draping himself over him like a lazy cat, tucking his face against Jack’s neck and inhaling deeply, breathing him in.

“We did technically finish one of our vows. ‘Til death do us part. Death did kind of do us part.”

“Bullshit. Like it would stop me from being your husband.”

“Would have been better of me to leave you out of this.”

But Jack wasn’t having that. He cupped Gabriel’s jaw and rolled him over, hovering above him and looking intensely down. “ _Forever_ , Gabriel. How many times did we tell each other that? It doesn’t mean ‘until it stops being convenient’. We’re in this mess together. I don’t care if you think you’re protecting me. You’re not. Let’s do this as a team.”

Gabriel kept that blank expression for a long time. A little too long. He finally broke with a snort, eyes cutting off to the side. “And you used to call me dramatic … For all you know I could have just come to get my mask.”

“Did you?”

“No. I’d also really like a nap.” Jack sighed but he couldn’t help the way a smile crept onto his face. And then he was being kissed, hungrily, a tongue finding its way into his mouth. His hands gripped Gabriel’s hair as he kissed him in return. Though it was the kiss of two men who missed each other, who’d gone too long without each other’s touches, it was also the kiss of two men as deeply in love as when they were young.  Things and changed and people changed, but one thing hadn’t – those two boys so deeply in love, sure of nothing in the world but each other. Their feelings hadn’t changed.

Jack felt his years beginning to creep up on him in achy joints. Pain spiked harshly through Gabriel’s damaged cells on a day-to-day, but some days were worse than others. Their kisses were still soft. The way they touched each other was still loving. They were older, with a thousand collective problems to deal with, but Jack had been right, Gabriel told himself.

They were a team. If the world wanted to swallow them up, they’d face the breach together. They’d walk through hell and come out on the other side. Together. _Forever_.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoy my work, please remember that i take commissions! my commission post can be found in the sidebar @ strikecommandergabriel.tumblr.com, and my IMs are open. if you want to support my work without purchasing a commission, you can always buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/charlieash
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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